


Friends Can Hold Hands

by xLoveMx



Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Penny and Sheldon are friends, Pre-Relationship, Shenny - Freeform, blink and you´ll miss it i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 16:25:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19772014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xLoveMx/pseuds/xLoveMx
Summary: Whatever Penny had expected to hear, that wasn´t it.





	Friends Can Hold Hands

**Author's Note:**

> I´ve always wanted to write a little something for Penny&Sheldon. This is really just a small One Shot that came to mind a couple of days ago, but I hope you guys enjoy it nonetheless. :)

Penny knew he was about to knock before he did.

She could hear his familiar steps across the hall, urgent, but he wasn´t upset over something she had done. He would have come straight to knock then. Two steps forward, one back. He was debating whether or not to knock at all. Or, if whatever was bothering him, wasn´t worth possibly annoying her.

Though really Penny hadn´t been annoyed with Sheldon in a long time. Not to the point where she wanted to kick him out of her apartment at least. As strange as it might have sounded: She actually enjoyed Sheldon´s company.

Ever since breaking up with Leonard things had slowly gone back to normal. They managed to be in the same room together without feeling awkward, but Penny still didn´t spend as much time across the hall as she used to.

Which was okay. She had her job and her other friends, but still…things had been a certain way for so long that it took some time getting used to the change, however minor it might have seemed.

The knocks on the door, accompanied with her name, pulled her from her thoughts. Her lips curved into a soft smile as she moved to open the door only to be faced with Sheldon, like she had expected.

“Everything okay, sweetie?” She found herself asking, smile still on her face. Sheldon, on the other hand, was shuffling from one foot to another and glancing over his shoulder again and again.

“They´re _doing_ it, Penny.” He eventually spoke and Penny raised an eyebrow.

“Who´s doing what?” The moment the words were out the whole thing began to make sense in her head and Penny wondered whether or not she wanted an answer to it.

“Leonard and Leslie Winkle.” Sheldon´s face scrunched up at the mention of one of one of his enemies’ names. “They are having coitus in the bathroom. In the bathroom, Penny! I spend time in there. The whole thing is bad enough, but coitus is only allowed if no one else is in the apartment at the time and, if said rule is to be changed, there needs to be a written agreement and a notice so I can get the noise cancelling headphones.”

“Probably not the right time to tell you how many times Leonard and I had sex while you were asleep, hm?” Penny chuckled as she stepped aside to let Sheldon in, who was most definitely rolling his eyes at her right now.

Closing the door Penny moved back into the apartment and nodded for Sheldon to sit down onto the couch. “I was going to watch the game,” She nodded at the TV where they were currently showing a shot of the cheerleaders doing of one their routines.

Back in High School Penny had been a cheerleader herself and boy that now seemed like a lifetime ago.

Sheldon, looking slightly startled, glanced back at Penny. “If your friends are coming over then I wouldn´t want to be a bother.” Funny he was saying that. Surely, Sheldon might not have been the most social person ever, but he knew enough about football to hold up a conversation with her friends, as opposed to Leonard.

“No. Most of them are out of town. It´s just you and me, sweetie.” She chuckled as she picked up the pizza box from the counter and placed it onto the couch table. “I don´t suppose you want a beer?”

Sheldon, who was looking at the pizza box, shook his head.

“You can have a slice if you want. Or two,” Penny grinned as she got a beer from the fridge before settling down next to him on the couch.

“Accurately cut slices? No pepperonis on top?” He eventually asked and Penny nodded, wondering when this had become a thing. She hadn´t expected Sheldon to join her and yet she had specifically asked the guy on the phone to cut the pizza into eight slices of the same size, precisely the same size.

The game started off just a moment later and for a while there was a comfortable silence while they ate pizza and Penny finished off her first bottle of beer.

“Do you miss it sometimes?” Sheldon eventually broke the silence at the end of the first quarter and Penny turned to look at him.

“Miss what?” She then asked, leaning back against the pillows.

“Being with Leonard.” Came the prompt answer from Sheldon and for a moment Penny wondered if that was really what he wanted to know.

“No. Not really.” It was the truth. She didn´t miss being with Leonard. Surely, she missed having sex every now and then, and the comfort of only having to go across the hall to get it, but actually making an effort to maintain that relationship? No. She didn´t miss that. “Do you miss being with Amy?”

There was another pause for a moment and Sheldon seemed to debate his answer. “I miss the routine that came with being with Amy.” He then admitted. “And I am still not a fan of change.”

It was funny how they could have these kind of conversations now. When moving in here Penny had never, in a million years, thought she could have a conversation with Sheldon that didn´t revolve around Star Trek or his bathroom schedule.

“But change isn´t always bad, right?” She then answered with a slight shrug. “I mean…sometimes things don´t work out. People change. And it would be worse to stay together just because you don´t like change than to take that step and maybe try something new. Or focus on your work more. Sometimes relationships can hold us back.”

Sheldon nodded. “I know. I´m just saying…I am not a fan of change. No matter what it might lead to, good or bad.”

Penny was about to reply when she caught a glimpse of the tv screen. “Seriously? A time out? They literally just got back on the field!” rolling her eyes Penny shook her head. “This is going to be a long game. You sure you don’t want a beer, sweetie?”

Sheldon declined and instead finished the rest of his pizza slice while Penny picked up another beer and almost spilled half of it while yelling at the tv. If Sheldon didn´t know her so well he´d say she was already drunk, but Penny could handle her liquor better than any of them, way better actually. Still, he was slightly concerned for her tv´s wellbeing as the bottle very nearly slipped from her hand and crashed into the screen as she got annoyed about the referee´s decision more once again.

“Seriously, where did he get his license from? The internet?”

Sheldon, against his better judgement probably, let out a chuckle. “My father would have liked you.”

Whatever Penny had expected to hear, that wasn´t it.

“He would have? Because I occasionally yell at the tv?”

“We really need to talk about your perception of what _occasionally_ means.”

Penny picked up the pillow nearest to her and threw it at Sheldon, who barely managed to keep it from hitting his face.

“So…your father would have liked me?”

“Oh, absolutely.” Sheldon placed the pillow back onto the couch neatly. “If I would have, hypothetically of course, brought someone like you home he would have quickly given us his blessing and then made us watch football with him. You would have probably been a cheerleader at our High School, which would have forced me to come see every game, because my father coached, my brother played and you´d be cheering.”

A pause, in which Penny imagined Sheldon at a football game, sitting in the stands and waving at her, despite clearly thinking he could be doing something more useful. But he would have been there, watching her, anyways.

“Of course I am very aware that a girl like you would have never dated a guy like me. Not that I was particularly interested in dating anyways,” Sheldon continued. “But statistically speaking it would have been highly unlikely to have found a pair like us in a Texan High School back then. Or in any other American state. Not impossible, but highly unlikely.”

“You would have just needed to ask.”

“I´m sorry?”

Penny stretched out her foot to kick Sheldon´s leg from her side of the couch. “I´m just saying. You never asked. Who knows what I would have said.” And maybe she wasn´t talking about 1990´s Texan High School anymore.

“I don´t…” Sheldon began, but Penny was quicker to speak again.

“Do you think I would have liked your father, too?” She asked and Sheldon, only slightly confused about the sudden topic change, nodded slowly.

“Yes. I would think so. You have the same bluntness when it comes to speaking your mind. And my father was also very good at sarcasm.”

“I´m going to take that as compliment.” Penny rolled her eyes at him, though there was the hint of a smile tugging on her lips.

The second quarter had just finished when Penny suddenly chuckled and Sheldon, once again, raised an eyebrow. There was nothing remotely funny about the end of the second quarter. In fact the whole second quarter had been pretty disastrous.

“What?” He found himself asking as Penny pulled her legs up onto the couch and looked at him.

“Would we have had sex? In your hypothetical High School scenario, I mean.” Another chuckle. “Or would you have made me wait until graduation? Or college even?”

“Really? That is what you´ve been thinking about?” Sheldon asked, his eyebrow still raised.

“Would we?” Penny then asked and really, she´d been thinking entirely too much about what sex with Sheldon would be like. That would have to stop.

“Well. We could have held hands for a start.” Sheldon began with a slight shrug.

“Okay. But even friends can hold hands, Sheldon.” Penny replied, “See?” Without even thinking she slid her hand into his and intertwined their fingers.

“They can?” Sheldon asked into the silence, which was then interrupted by the sound of a whistle that indicated the start of the third quarter.

Penny didn´t pull her hand back.

“Yeah. And I mean…it´s pretty nice. And hey, we wouldn´t have been the worst couple to ever exist.”

“No?” Sheldon glanced down at their intertwined fingers.

“No. I mean…just look across the hall. Leonard and Leslie? Those two names together alone are a disaster.”

Another chuckle fell from Penny´s lips as she scooted just the tiniest bit closer to Sheldon. “Seriously?” She then added, her attention pulled away from him as she waved her free hand at the tv. “That referee should be fired.”

Sheldon though, just found himself smiling. “Absolutely. He completely butchered the Eagles vs Packers game last week.” He agreed as he ever so slightly squeezed Penny´s hand.

“See? I told you.” Penny simply agreed. And squeezed back.


End file.
